Nb: This blog is linked to 'The Great Handwriting Scandal' and 'The Great Biscuit Scandal', I suggest that you read them before this to get the true flavour of Mrs Baker and her evil Empire!
Mrs Baker asked, in fact instructed, the class to paint a picture of a
Princess. I think it linked to some lesson we had earlier in the week. It could
possibly be linked to our exploration of the Middle Ages.
We formed our circle of desks; we always moved the
desks when we had Art classes. I guess it made it louche and dangerous for the
starchy Mrs Baker: a circle of desks in her well-formed, strictly controlled
classroom, was highly dangerous.
The class received the instructions from Mrs Baker, we were
to paint a Princess. Inside I groaned, I liked doing still life and landscapes.
I was at next to my great pal Emmanuel Buriobey, I think he was Nigerian. He
was certainly very black.
We both took up our pencils as we were instructed to always
sketch the painting before committing paint to paper. We had that grey, sugar
paper to paint on, we never had white watercolour paper. It was too expensive.
We both sketched a face, two eyes a nose and a mouth.
Naturally both of our drawings had the flowing locks of a ‘real’ Princess, well
a childlike, perhaps Disney influenced interpretation of a Princess. Neither of
us had seen a real Princess, Emanuel certainly hadn’t as he was a new immigrant
to the UK.
It was only after the sketches had been inspected by Mrs
Baker the class were allowed to go into the store cupboard and get a palette of
those cake water colours or a scoop of each colour in powder paints. I think
that the cakes were made by Rowney and the powder paints made by Reeves, I
remember the spotty dog on the tins! We also had those plastic palettes with
the round dishes to put the paints in and every child had two paintbrushes
each, one round one, one flat one. There was no refinement on that dictate, you
had to do your best with those two brushes regardless of the subject be it
landscape, still life or portrait, two brushes each was all that was allowed.
I started to mix a pretty pink colour for my princess’ face
and started to paint it on, I missed out the eyes, they had to be white and
have blue pupils. The hair I had decided was to be straw coloured, a close
approximation to blonde as I could get in watercolours supplied. I had at that
point in my life seen few colour films and colour television didn’t exist yet.
My received world was all black and white as I saw it in newspapers and on the
tiny nine inch television we had. I toshed away, painting the pink for the face
and the red for the lips and then I glanced across to Emmanuels painting. He
painting the princess brown, a deep dark brown. I looked up and Mrs Baker was
doing her round of the circle of desks, she was a few desks away yet. I nudged
Emmanuel and asked him,
“What you doing?”
He chuckled and carried on painting the brown face onto his sheet
of paper. He then took his other brush and painted a large swathe of black hair
atop of the dark brown face.
I watched in fascination and then chuckled. I saw Mrs Baker
glance across the room towards the two of us.
“A black Princess....” he half whispered and his answer trailed off as he
continued to paint her hair onto the paper,
“A black Princess…”
That repeat of the answer caught Mrs Baker’s attention. Emmanuel
and I saw her glance across towards us. However she didn’t hurry over, she
continued to inspect each of the children’s painting adding some criticism or
in the case of the class swots some encouragement as to how well they were
doing. I knew Emmanuel had done ‘wrong’. I could feel it.
Mrs Baker had marked us, we were the class rebels; the class
tearaways. Mrs Baker slowly made her way towards Emmanuel and I, Emmanuel was
to be the first of us that she would reach. The tension mounted, I sort of knew
that she would not accept Emmanuel’s interpretation of a Princess.
I was right.
Mrs Baker kept glancing at Emmanuel’s painting as she
advised and cajoled the child next to him to use certain colours and to reflect
the status of a Princess in her painting.
“What lovely hair, I like the blue eyes….”
Mrs Baker moved along the row of children like a shark
homing in on its prey. Emmanuel was her prey that day.
I felt the presence of Mrs Baker hovering over Emmanuel. He
kept up painting the princess’ hair, a lovely Afro in 1970s terms.
He was deliberately ignoring her. I could feel the tension
building as he dipped his brush in and out of the black paint and applied each loaded
brush to his carefully crafted painting. I am sure the children on the other
side of the class facing her could see her face turning purple as each brush
stroke hit the paper. She could hold herself and her anger no longer. She
reached over Emmanuel’s shoulder and ripped the painting from under his brush.
The brush continued it journey down and across his painting cutting across the
brown face with a broad black slash of unintended colour. He sat back in
resignation and let Mrs Baker snatch away his painting from his desk.
Mrs Baker just barked at him,
“What is that thing supposed to be?”
She held the painting up at chest level between two pinched
fingers to avoid the wet paint on the paper and swivelled her body so the whole
class could see the offending item. Some of the children giggled as the
exhibition of Emmanuel’s painting continued.
“What is that thing supposed to be Buriobey? I asked you to
paint a princess. There is no such thing as a black princess. Are you trying to
be funny? Do you know something I don’t know?”
Emmanuel turned around in his chair and faced Mrs Baker and
said,
“It’s a black princess Miss, we have them in Africa….” His
voice trailed off as Mrs Baker ripped the painting in half and in half again
and dropped the remnants onto his desk.
“I won’t have your insolence Buriobey, I won’t have it! Whoever
heard of a black princess?”
“I have Miss.” he replied, “We have them in Africa. We do
Miss.”
“Don’t be ridiculous Buriobey, they don’t exist.”
“They do Miss.”
“Buriobey, they do not exist.”
Emmanuel stood his ground.
“They do Miss, they do. My Dad told me…”
“They do not exist Buriobey…”
Emmanuel looked at the ripped pieces of his painting and
then at me. I couldn’t back him up. I didn’t know then if black Princesses
existed, I do now. They didn’t exist in my books or the television.
Emmanuel tries one last ditch attempt at persuading Mrs
Baker,
“They do exist Miss, I am related to one my Dad told me….”
Mrs Baker could take no more of Emmanuel’s insistences on
the subject.
“Get out of the class Buriobey, now!”
“Stand up and get out!”
Emmanuel stood up, threw the paintbrush he was holding on to
the desk and walked out of the class. He stood there until the end of the art
lesson. Art was his favourite subject at school, in fact it was ‘our’ favourite
subject.
Mrs Baker was not going to lose this argument. She moved
past me ignoring my efforts of the archetypal blonde Princess and stood behind
Joanne, the class swot.
She reached over Joanne’s shoulder and plucked the soggy
paper from the desk.
“This Class One, is what a real Princess looks like.”
She held the painting up between her thumb and finger and
swivelled on her hips to display this unknown masterpiece to the class. Of
course it was the perfect, pink blonde, blue eyed Princess with a tiara or a
crown.
“Well done Joanne.”
“Well done.” She said again to hammer home the point.
And with that praise she carefully put Joanne’s ‘perfect’
Princess back lovingly on Joanne’s desk.
Joanne naturally glowed at such praise.
I glowered at her in my best 9 year old menacing face.
“Willis, clear up Buriobey’s mess….”
I did. Very grudgingly I did so. I took Emmanuel's painting and put it into the class bin next to Mrs Baker's desk. The very same bin my essay had landed in the week before.
One day Mrs Baker, one day.
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